100 D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
concerns were that important? Walters apparently interpreted his
reaction as indicating that he wouldn’t stand in the way of firing
McNeil. Walters may have even thought that Adario wanted McNeil
fired but was unwilling to do it himself.
Moreover, Adario should have realized much earlier that Walters
was a threat to McNeil and to the values he wanted to instill in his
department. Recall that she was reluctant to hire McNeil in the first
place and that she and others in the department were inclined to
bulldoze their decisions through the organization. None of this, by
itself, may have meant much. Together, however, they formed a
pattern that should have put Adario on alert.
Machiavelli would have admired Adario if, from the beginning,
even before McNeil was hired, Adario had taken steps to get Walters
on board or at least keep her from making mischief. Instead, Machia-
velli probably would have commended Lisa Walters, at least for her
short-term tactics. She didn’t overreach, timed her moves carefully,
and had found herself a powerful ally, the vice president who helped
her carry out her plan.
Adario would have fared better if he had thought carefully about
four important questions: What are the other strong, persuasive,
competing interpretations of the situation or problem that I hope
to use as a defining moment for my organization? What is the cash
value of this situation and of my ideas for the people whose support
I need? Have I orchestrated a process that can make the values I care
about become the truth for my organization? Am I playing to win?
T
RAINING IN
L
OSING
Machiavelli might have pressed Adario to answer a last question,
one in which the political becomes the personal. How much did
Adario really care about creating a family-friendly department and
helping Kathryn McNeil? Adario’s efforts had run counter to one
of Machiavelli’s bedrock convictions:
He will be successful who directs his actions to the spirit of the times....
One can see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail;
and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the
Truth Is a Process 101
one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else
than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the
times.
13
Adario should have realized from the beginning that he was battling
‘‘the spirit of the times’’ in his company. Did he want to continue doing
so now? If Adario wanted to view himself as an organization man, or
as a good butler like Stevens, his path would now be clear. McNeil’s
job waslost,theorganization’svalueswere defined, and now he needed
to protect his own job. But the damage-control tactics Machiavelli
might recommend would completely overlook the fact that Adario’s
failure could also be a personal defining moment, like Steve Lewis’s
decision about the St. Louis presentation.
Like Lewis, Adario now had to decide whether there were some
lines he would not cross. Should he fight McNeil’s firing? Should
he make clear that he disagreed with it? Should he say he supported
the decision but with reservations. Or should he say that Walters
had done what he was planning to do? When Adario chooses among
these alternatives, as he must, he will be revealing and testing some
of his basic values and also, as Nietzsche would emphasize, choosing
his future self. Nietzsche would likely view Adario’s choice in similar
terms. Adario now needs to answer Nietzsche’s challenge, ‘‘This is
my way; where is yours?’’
Peter Adario might think otherwise and view this as a young
person’s issue. After all, Adario had already worked for 14 years at
three different firms; he was married, had children, and knew a lot
about the computer industry. His major commitments in life seemed
to be behind him. He thought he knew who he was and what he
stood for, and his successful career suggested he had made the
right choices. But this way of thinking would repel Nietzsche. He
condemned complacency about oneself, writing that ‘‘All those who
are in the process of becoming must be furious when they perceive
some satisfaction in this area, an impertinent ‘retiring on one’s laurels’
or ‘self-congratulation.’ ’’
14
One of his foremost interpreters observed
that, for Nietzsche, ‘‘The creation of the self is not a static episode,
a final goal which, once attained, forecloses the possibility of continu-
ing to change and develop.’’
15
102 D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
From Nietzsche’s perspective, then, Adario’s failure was actually
an opportunity for learning and personal growth. After Roger Han-
sen’s suicide, an acquaintance commented that ‘‘People who breeze
through high school and college the way Denny did get no training
in losing.’’ No one enjoys losing, and some people never recover
from failures. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s rather romantic declaration
that ‘‘What does not kill me makes me stronger’’ contains an im-
portant element of truth for managers.
For Adario, who had long worked and lived in the flow of success,
the experience of adversity proved valuable. He told his boss, the
vice president, that he disagreed with the decision to fire Kathryn
McNeil and objected strongly to the way the decision was made.
He then told Lisa Walters that her behavior would be reflected in
the next performance review he put in her file. Neither Walters nor
the vice president said much in response, and for months afterward
Adario lived and worked in a state of limbo. He feared he had
imperiled his job, but the issue never arose again.
What had Adario learned? He found he had much more ambiva-
lence about his job. He was grateful to have it, despite its demands,
mainly because he believed he had come close to losing it. At the
same time, he was more aware of the arbitrariness and potential
harshness of the business system in which he worked. After all, he
had watched Kathryn McNeil, a devoted mother and a hard and
talented worker, lose her job on four hours’ notice and walk out the
door, in tears, with two weeks of severence pay. He later learned
that she was unemployed for five months after she was fired.
Adario also felt he had rid himself of a naive view of what it
takes to redefine the values of an organization, even a small one like
his department. He now viewed the Johnson & Johnson story—both
the Tylenol and the Zomax episodes—in a new light. He realized
that he needed to get his hands dirty, in Sartre’s sense of the term.
This meant thinking and acting more shrewdly and realistically, so
that he and the people who relied on him would not, once again,
climb out on a limb and ignore the sawing noises behind them.
Adario now understood that managers could meet their ethical re-
sponsibilities only if they had excellent managerial and political
skills, and he felt he had begun to understand this in a instinctive
way, as a result of his frustrating and painful experience.
Truth Is a Process 103
Finally, Adario found himself reexamining how the pieces of his
life were fitting together. His failure led not to a midlife crisis, but
to something nearer to a midlife reconsideration.
16
The relentless
pace of his work had strained his marriage, left his children near
the bottom of his to-do list, and made him an accomplice in firing
a hard-working, admirable employee. Was this the path he wanted?
In Aristotle’s terms, were these the practices and habits that he
wanted to shape his character? From James’s perspective, did it offer
‘‘vital satisfactions,’’ and was it ‘‘good for life’’?
Clearly, the question ‘‘This is my way; where is yours?’’ is not
merely relevant to Adario, but crucial. And, by reflecting on the
issues it raises, Adario would raise his odds of avoiding the fate of
another middle-aged middle manager, the butler Stevens.
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